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Pretend journalist and Republican activist Hannah Giles agreed to pay $50,000 to former San Diego ACORN worker Juan Carlos Vera as a part of a legal settlement struck last summer in response to an invasion of privacy lawsuit filed against her and her former partner James O'Keefe, Vera's attorney Eugene Iredale has confirmed to The BRAD BLOG.

O'Keefe and Giles' illicit taping of Vera was carried out as part of the deceptively edited series of hit videos released by the pair in 2009. The tapes were published, and paid for, by the late con-man Andrew Breitbart. Vera had been portrayed in the misleading video as having been willing to help the pair smuggle underage prostitutes into the United States across the Mexican border. In fact, Vera had played along with the duo's ridiculous proposed scheme only long enough to collect information from O'Keefe and Giles (and take their photographs), before contacting law enforcement immediately after the secretly video-taped meeting.

During the course of Vera's lawsuit, it was revealed that Breitbart, who died in March of 2012, had agreed to pay the pair some $120,000 for their hoax tapes in $5,000 monthly installments to each. O'Keefe ended up collecting $65,000 before he was terminated around the time of his CNN "Sex Boat" scandal in September of 2010. Giles' payments, on the other hand, were reduced from $5,000 month to $3,000 at some point, before being terminated for what she described, according to Vera's attorney, as "a conflict of visions".

Accordingly, Giles only ended up collecting $32,000 from Breitbart, but thanks to the settlement last Summer, she was forced to hand all of that, plus $18,000 more, over to Vera.

O'Keefe had attempted to fight for dismissal of Vera's July 2010 lawsuit but lost in court on every attempt to do so. While it took O'Keefe until this past week to see the writing on the wall and finally agree to settle with Vera, Giles was smart enough to settle her own part of the lawsuit with Vera last Summer. Giles' settlement agreement had been reported by Dave Maass of the San Diego City Beat at the time, but the conditions of that settlement and Giles' agreement to pay out $50,000 to the former ACORN worker had not been known.

Asked during his sworn deposition why he didn't attempt to confirm the false story given to him by Vera before publishing his videos tapes, O'Keefe, who still pretends to be a "journalist", explained: "I did want to follow up. I just didn't end up following up"...

For their part, O'Keefe and Giles received criminal immunity from the CA Attorney General in exchange for providing the office with the previously unreleased, unedited versions of the video tapes. The AG's probe found no violations of the law by ACORN workers, but the report did note that the secret recordings appeared to be in violation of CA's Privacy Act. While the immunity deal spared the duo from criminal prosecution for violation of that law in the state, it did not protect them against civil enforcement of the act, such as that brought by Vera. Nor did it protect Breitbart, who, it was discovered through depositions from O'Keefe and Giles in the lawsuit, had prior knowledge of the illicit video taping at several ACORN offices in California. He could have been charged with a criminal violation of CA law, as well as being named as a defendant in Vera's suit.

Vera says that the video tapes, widely promoted by Rightwing outlets such as Fox "News" (and many non-Rightwing outlets as well) without any fact-checking whatsoever, resulted in tarnishing his reputation. He says he has had difficulty finding work ever since.

"My reputation was in the garbage," he told MSNBC's Ed Schultz last week in broken English, adding that while the settlement could be seen as a victory, he felt "sad" because ACORN, who had "very good programs", was put out of business after the O'Keefe/Giles/Breitbart campaign.

ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, had been a four-decade old nationwide non-profit group dedicated to fighting against predatory lending practices and assisting millions of low- and middle-income American families in obtaining housing loans as well as participate in their democracy by legally registering to vote. Vera was just one of tens of thousands of employees who lost their jobs as a result of the Rightwing political hit job on the organization which was forced to shut its door in the wake of the manufactured scandal.

Since news of O'Keefe's settlement with Vera broke last week, the Rightwing grifter has taken to his website and Twitter in an attempt to claim his innocence, despite the settlement.

He described media coverage of the settlement agreement as "lies and lies and more lies from journafascists" and attempted to taunt the media to "have the guts" to allow him to tell his side of the story. We took him up on that offer and invited him to appear on our KPFK/Pacifica Radio show this Wednesday. O'Keefe has yet to "have the guts" to even respond to our invitation.

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CORRECTION: This article has been updated to more accurately describe the payments received by Giles from Breitbart after the ACORN scam. She had initially been slated to receive $60,000 from Breitbart, as we initially reported, but only ended up receiving $32,000 of that before parting ways with Breitbart, according to details said to have been offered during the discovery phase of the Vera case.

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The CA Attorney General should go to jail for giving O'Keefe and Giles immunity. Even if he was going to play that game, why not prisoner's dilemma them: offer immunity to the one who produces the tape first and testifies against the other? OR GET A COURT ORDER to produce the tape, and jail them both for contempt if they fail to do so. Right-wingers with sugar daddies have a get-out-of-jail-free card. That immunity lets their crime spree continue.

Randy, it's all political. As AG he goes for the strategy he thinks will work to get charges that will stick. Doing what you suggest could have resulted in everyone stonewalling and dragging the thing out. An AG wouldn't want that since it calls his "effectiveness" into question and allows the RWNM to spin it into an alleged witchhunt.

Small fish are often offered deals to turn in bigger fish. It's entirely possible he may have offered them the deal hoping to get Breitbart, who had the good sense to die before he could be named in legal papers.

You're smoking a cigarette in you photo Brad. Spending your money to poison your body. Sure it's your choice. But the behavior indicates a level of stupidity and lack of personal discipline that speaks poorly for the likely value of your opinion to this first time visitor.

The tobacco industry kills 400,000 Americans every year Brad. They couldn't do it without your support.

Wow, "Mindy" - so you assess factual information based on whether a cigarette appears on the webpage, without bothering to inquire further? Brilliant, letting your personal prejudices prevent you from learning anything new!

Never mind literally thousands of brilliant articles written by Brad Friedman on a wide range of subjects, or the fact that this site is probably the nation's single largest and most complete repository of articles pertaining to e-voting and election integrity. None of that matters because you spotted a cigarette on a web page.

Your rude comment @4 appears to be a prime example of a lazy individual who judges a book by its cover and reads no further.

Adam: Thanks for the link to the video of last year's Steamboat Institute conference in which Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe are referred to as "a brave young woman and brave young man" and their ACORN pimp hoax is referred to as an "award winning story."

The group, whose website extols fracking, announced that the keynote speakers at its next conference in August 2013 will be Dick and Lynn Cheney.

So, Bonnie and Clyde were granted immunity from criminal prosecution if they produced the original video, proving the aired video was edited. Isn't that like granting a murderer immunity if he produces the murder weapon.

ACORN was in the trenches of the poorest areas of the country, fighting for minimum wage increases. If a ballot measured was defeated they just started over for the next one.
Thanks to the Bush Presidency, the Federal min. was not increased for TEN YEARS.

It just goes to show you how most of the mainstream media are GUTLESS, LYING WEASELS. They need to get off their self-righteous high horses. They're going to (figuratively) get their comeuppance sooner or later.

I think maybe someone should look at the housing side of this. ACORN helped get low income folks into their own houses. Maybe some work should be done examining the whole real estate meltdown and possibly how ACORN was used/gamed to facilitate the rape of low income savings. Then destroy the program so the trail is harder to follow.